Cool for Kravitz: What Lenny did next

This is a preview of four of the great tracks of next week's sensational CD exclusive – six tracks from Lenny Kravitz's new album, and six original studio recordings of his greatest hits, available free on CD in the Mail on Sunday. Read Live Magazine's exclusive interview with Lenny Kravitz below.

He's a rock god, he's dated Nicole Kidman, Kylie and Madonna, and he's built Miami's ultimate party pad. Now for his latest trick - he's giving away six new songs and six classic hits with next week's Mail on Sunday. Live's verdict?

machines, pool tables, "doors that opened like the ones on Star Trek", and,

of course, the obligatory mirrored ceiling, visitors took much coaxing to leave.

"One time, I wasn't really out partying a lot," says Kravitz, "and Prince

was in Miami so he popped round.

"He took one look at the place and said: “I can see why you don't get out very much.”

"I normally asked people to take their shoes off before they came in, but

Prince was the only one who walked in wearing them, and because I have so

much respect for him, I let him get away with it.

"But you should ask Cameron Diaz about the white fur tunnel," he chuckles, though will elucidate no further despite feverish imploring. "It was the most amazing chill pad, though. The ultimate. Friends like [hip-hop duo] Outkast would stop by for a quick drink, which would turn into a full-blown party with 60 people that finished at dawn."

But today, the pad has gone, along, it seems, with many other accoutrements

of 43-year-old Kravitz's past. "I pared down my life a lot," he explains,

"because there comes a time when you have to start downsizing. I even sold

all my cars – my old American muscle cars and my Cadillacs."

The tattoos are still there, though, as are the various piercings

(including one in a rather intimate region), but the man who would scarcely

leave the house without a feather boa draped around his shoulders is no

more.

We meet in the bar of Miami's lush Raleigh Hotel and, although soberly

obligatory black sunglasses (though the black dreads have long since gone),

his renowned sex appeal remains.

Several acquaintances (all of them women)come up and say hello, and he greets them all with affection.

Yet he has always been full of intriguing contradictions: a man who has dated some of the world's most renowned beauties yet can still talk openly about his

feelings of loneliness and of a desire to be settled.

"What can I tell you," he says in a voice hewn from charcoal.

"I'm a classic Gemini."

With more than 20 million sales for hits such as Are You Gonna Go My Way,

Let Love Rule and Fly Away (which became a No 1 hit in the UK after being

used in a car ad), and four consecutive Grammy awards for Best Male Rock

Vocal Performance between 1999 and 2002, his credentials speak for

themselves.

His eighth and latest studio album, It Is Time For A Love Revolution (the kind of rock-hippyish title one has come to expect from Kravitz) contains a mix of the political (Back In Vietnam), sentimental (I'll Be Waiting – Kravitz's current single) and personal (Will You Marry Me).

And yet his most poignant song is Long And Sad Goodbye, an ode to his

late TV producer father, Sy Kravitz.

Their fractious relationship was in part due to Kravitz Snr's treatment of his wife, the late Roxie Roker (star of Seventies US TV sitcom The Jeffersons).

Though father and son remained at odds for much of their lives, they made their peace shortly before Sy Kravitz's death from leukaemia two-and-a-half years ago.

"Life with my father was tough," Kravitz admits.

"He didn't know how to communicate very well and he had the same kind of relationship with his own dad.

"My father hurt my mother, not physically but emotionally through his

affairs, which was hard to witness as a kid.

"I didn't see the women myself, but friends would tell me they'd seen my dad with someone.

"It's funny how men get when they're insecure," he says, shaking his head gently.

"They tend to drop a level when having affairs with other women because as far as I could tell, none of the other women my father was with were ever as

beautiful or as smart as my mother.

"It hurt me deeply to see my mother in such pain because she and I were so tight, and I'm not ashamed to admit I was a mummy's boy. I moved out of home when I was 15 because of my father."

Despite the warming between father and son in later years, some scars still

remain.

Sy Kravitz once told his teenage son: "You'll do the same thing as

me one day."

Kravitz says, "I didn't know what kind of weight those words would have in my life – a lot of my demons stemmed from them.

"Words can be a blessing or a curse. If you tell a child they are nothing,

then that child grows up being afraid and has no confidence.

"I was told by my grandfather that I could do anything, so that's what I ended up believing. But when your father tells you at 18 that you'll end up being

unfaithful just like he was, it can be something that follows you for a

long time.

"I had lots of issues when it came to being faithful to women and

I've had to fight it a lot in my life."

In 1987, Kravitz married Lisa Bonet, the beautiful star of TV sitcom The

Cosby Show, with whom he has a daughter, Zoë, now 19.

The marriage ended after six years amid rumours of infidelity, although Kravitz says, "Actually, my marriage ending was a whole other issue entirely. But

infidelity has been partly responsible for finishing some of my

relationships.

"At times I didn't know how to deal with opening myself up to someone and obviously that comes down to a fear of intimacy.

"But I'm waiting to find my wife and I'd really love more children."

Kravitz's combination of openness, vulnerability and rock-god looks have

brought him a series of glamorous partners including Kylie Minogue, Madonna

They split after several months (the fact that Kravitz was photographed

cosying up to Brazilian artist Isis Arruda at a Miami nightclub didn't

help) and now, Kravitz shrugs: "I'm still friends with Nicole, just as I'm

friends with all my exes, but I'm not really seeing anyone at the moment."

This is something that Kravitz says in all his interviews and which,

frankly, sounds disingenuous for a man of his pulling power. "It's true,'

he laughs.

"I get groupies throwing themselves at me, but I just can't do

it.

"When I was a kid, I wasn't super-popular with the girls, and it wasn't

until I picked up a guitar that I gained some appeal.

"The girls never liked the nice guys – they liked the guys who treated them like s*** – and I could never understand it. When I was a teenager, some friends set me up with a girl who was going to sleep with me and I just couldn't go through

with it because it was meaningless.

"If we're not talking and connecting and getting into each other's minds, then I'm not interested."

Kravitz's desire to "meet the perfect woman" and his disillusionment at

failing to do so coincided with the start of a lengthy world tour in 2002

to promote his album Lenny.

He sank into a debilitating two-year depression. "The whole tour was terrible," he says.

"I'm usually a very positive person but I would go straight to my hotel room and hide there until I had to be on stage. I was feeling lonely and overworked and very, very tired and I was just spending an excessive amount of time on the road.

"I'd grown up in a household that was always open, so I just carried on

being as open as I was before, but of course, people try to take advantage

of you and so I got burned a couple of times.

"But I closed down a lot, got a sense of who to trust and pared down my life."

Though he has divested himself of many of his belongings, one thing that

lives on in his new home is the original Abbey Road Studio's mixing desk

which Kravitz bought in 1990.

"All the Beatles' albums were recorded on it and I got it when my first

album Let Love Rule came out, as I came into a bit of money.

"I'd seen a documentary in England about it made by one of the sound engineers and I knew I had to have it.

"People aren't really into vintage equipment but it's just an incredible piece of gear. At the time I blew all my money on it, but if you offered me £5 million for it today, I wouldn't take it.

"When you see pictures of John Lennon sitting at it..." he shivers, "it's just

priceless.

"I'd love to bring Paul McCartney back to my place and make a

record with him. How cool would that be?"

The multi-talented Kravitz writes, sings and produces all his own

material, playing all the instruments – guitar, bass, keyboards and drums.

Given his upbringing it is not surprising that Kravitz should have become a

musician.

Born in New York City in 1964, Kravitz was brought up by his

Bahamian mother and Russian-Jewish father in Manhattan's well-to-do Upper

East Side.

His parents loved jazz and would often take him to concerts.

When Kravitz was 11, the family moved west to Los Angeles where he joined

the California Boys Choir, and it was his musical talent that enabled him

to enrol at the Beverly Hills High School, immortalised in the teen soap

Beverly Hills 90210.

"I'd always been a really independent kid in New York," he says, "just

taking the subway and doing my own thing, and then I got to LA where no one

walked anywhere and I couldn't go anywhere unless someone drove me and I

hated it.

But at my school I used to bump into Slash [the former Guns N'

Roses guitarist] in the hallways, David Schwimmer was in the year after me

and Nicolas Cage and I did a play together.

"When I first heard rock music this whole new world opened up to me.

"I got into Jimi Hendrix, Cream, the Who and all those great English bands like

Led Zeppelin while smoking pot with my friends.

"Later, when I was on tour, Robert Plant actually opened for me. I was being a complete perfectionist pain in the a***, whereas he was so humble and sweet. I was taking things too seriously and being far too intense and in the end he just said to me, “What the f*** is wrong with you? Just loosen up,” and so I did."

After leaving home, Kravitz lived in a £3-a-day rented Ford Pinto near the

beach ("I'd wake up every morning to the sound of a cop banging on the

window") and started writing songs, renaming himself Romeo Blue.

Record labels were interested in signing him but he was told his music "wasn't

black enough".

Eventually, Kravitz, under his own name again, signed to Virgin Records and his debut album, Let Love Rule, was released in 1989 when Kravitz was 25.

He followed it up with Mama Said and, in 1993, Are You Gonna Go My Way, the title single becoming a phenomenal worldwide hit which sent his career into overdrive.

As befits a Gemini, Kravitz now has his fingers in several pies.

As well as his considerable music career, he has his own company, Kravitz Design, which styled the Florida Room of the Miami Delano Hotel, a Fifties Cuban-style lounge.

He also has plans to direct his first movie and, inevitably, he has

been asked to do his own clothing line.

Later, at the photo shoot, surrounded by PRs, managers, photographers and assistants, he seems ill at ease.

"I used to be good at this when I was younger," Kravitz half

apologises to the photographer.

It's only when a mobile phone goes off –its ringtone the Tarzan call – that the ice melts. "That's cool," he says, relaxing visibly, so much so that even the sunglasses – Kravitz's protection from unwanted attention – come off.

"Life is pretty simple these days because it seems to be the right thing for me now. And I tell you what," he adds, "it feels pretty good."

Lenny Kravitz's album "It Is Time For A Love Revolution" is released on February 5. The single 'I'll Be Waiting' is out now.